Fat Years - Chan Koonchung [80]
“In other words,” explained Liu Xing, “the government now wants to maintain a posture of solving the common people’s problems. Thus they must not allow the outbreak of any collective incidents to disrupt their harmonious society. The Party officials not only must not provoke the common people, but they must also remain vigilant and have advance warning to head off any possible mass demonstrations, resolve issues before anything happens, make big problems small, and small problems disappear. If the Party cadres lack this early-warning sense and an incident of collective protest occurs, no matter how it is finally resolved, Party officials will have to take the blame in the end.
“What is one-party dictatorship? Dictatorship simply means that the ruling party has the absolute power to practice strict dictatorship whenever it wants to. At that point, the entire apparatus of state can practice dictatorship against the people or a portion of the people without authorization or any limitation by the people. By the same token, under a one-party dictatorship, when the ruling party wants to avoid trouble, it will try to make the people everywhere feel the paternalistic solicitude of the party-state government. Today China is in a period when the Party wants to avoid trouble. Only the core interest of the Communist Party’s fundamental one-party rule must not waver, however flexible its maneuvers or moderate its methods.”
Gao Shengchan understood all this only too well. His church had been able to develop without government interference for the past two years because the government’s present policy was to avoid trouble. The officials were all afraid that some mass incident might occur in their jurisdiction, afraid of losing their positions, and so nobody dared to poke any hornets’ nest. And the underground churches were just such hornets’ nests.
What Liu Xing was saying at this time was quite deliberate, and Gao Shengchan interpreted his words very correctly. His unspoken message was that although the people were afraid of the officials, the officials were also afraid of the people. If news of a possible mass protest became known, it was quite possible that local officials would want to resolve the situation before it escalated. During the preparatory stages of a protest both sides still had room to maneuver, but after the protest broke out, the outcome was unpredictable. If the protesters were charged with “beating, smashing, stealing, and fighting,” suppressed, and thrown into jail, both the officials and the people would suffer. Even if, after the protest, a few officials lost their jobs and were replaced, it would be of no real help to anybody.
But who should one inform about the possible outbreak of a mass protest? Gao Shengchan pondered. If you’re too open, it’ll become a public incident, and the local officials will lose face; if you’re not open enough, you’ll be ineffective. For example, Liu Xing will just pretend he doesn’t know anything about it because it’s not under his department. Gao Shengchan gloomily ate his after-dinner fruit and wondered, Which official would be worried about this impending incident?
Of course the township Party leadership was the most directly involved, but if they hadn’t been so fixated about making money in the first place, they would not have created the situation. With the prospect of great financial gains, they would not “shed tears until being measured for their coffins”—they would not give in. There would